Tag Archives: merit pay

Many of the companies I work with want the benefit of the team effect in software development. The managers in these companies recognize the enormous benefits teams provide to the company–creativity, engagement, learning. However, in many of these companies, the HR systems focus only on individual accomplishment. Individual goals, individual bonuses and merit-pay processes cause…

If you’ve been reading this blog for a while, you know how I feel about compensation systems that claim to motivate better performance with differential pay. For example, A Compensation Story in 2006, It’s What We Know That Ain’t So and Pay for Performance and Why it Doesn’t Really Work in 2007 So of course,…

Every so often, I share my views on pay–for–performance and annual performance appraisals on this blog. My experience is that pay-for-performance and annual performance appraisals–contrary to popular belief–actually hurt performance and results, rather than driving higher performance. So I was interested to learn, via Bob Sutton’s blog, that Jeffrey Pfeffer (co-author of Hard Facts, Dangerous…

I found this snippet by Dick Dauphinais of the Herman Group via the Dear Workforce email newsletter: Compensation experts for years have preached that discussions on performance with employees should not be linked to pay discussions, although most companies ignore this advice. I am not a fan of using employees’ performance ratings or scores as…